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Description of the Character, Manners, and Customs of the People of India (1879)
Description of the Character Manners and Customs of the People of India - 1879 Author:Jean Antoine Dubois Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ill workers in metals; the Barbers; and the Utarans, whose chief employment is to excavate tauks, repair their banks, erect mud walls, and the like. These las... more »t kinds of labour, with some others, being equally required in all places, the oasts which exercise them, and upon whom they are exclusively imposed, are of course found in every country. These employments descend from father to son, from one generation to another; and in no case can the son renounce the cast of his father or take up a profession different from that of his ancestors. The casts which we have enumerated 'belong entirely to the tribe of the Sudras: but the several casts of the cultivators take precedence of the rest and look down with contempt on the tribes of tradesmen and labourers. . In some districts, casts are to be seen that cannot be met with elsewhere, and which are to be distinguished from all others by singular peculiarities. I am not aware, for example, that the very remarkable cast of Naimars or Nairs, in which the women enjoy a plurality of husbands, is to be found any where but in the forests of the coast of Malabar-. The cast of Calaris, or Robbers, who exercise their profession without disguise, as their birthright, is found but rarely beyond the Marava, a territory bordering on the fishing coast. The princes of this little state belong to the tribe and profession of Robbers, and conceive their calling no way discreditable to themselves or their tribe, as having legitimately descended to them by right of inheritance. So far from shrinking at the appellation, if one of them be asked who he is, he will coolly answer that he is a robber. Indeed the tribe is accounted one of the most distinguished among the Sudras, in the province of Madura, where it flourishes. There is another cas...« less